If there’s anything that tastes like home to me is stuffed peppers!

Originally they are made with chicken in it, but I make it vegetarian, and I swear, you can’t tell the difference.

True, it involves some extra work to execute this lovely dish. But oh boy it’s worth it.

By the way, you can stuff potatoes, round zucchinis, onions and tomatoes too, just go with what you have 🙂

In this instance we had some green peppers on sale so I decided to go for it.

Ingredients (for 6 big peppers):

6 Peppers (duh 🙂 )

 

For the stuffing:

1.5 cups rice (I used brown rice in this instance)

1 Carrot (grated)

½ Onion (chopped)

½ tsp Turmeric (for the amazing color)

1 tsp Garlic Powder

2 tsp dried Basil

½ tsp Cumin

1 tbsp Tomato Paste

Chopped fresh dill

Salt & Pepper

1 tbsp vegetable oil for the carrot and onion

 

For the sauce:

2.5 Tomato paste cans (the small ones – 6 oz.)

1 tbsp garlic powder

½ tsp cumin

A pinch of sugar

5-6 cups water

 

Directions:

Step 1: Preparing the Peppers.

1. Rinse the peppers and make sure that they all fit in your pot (make sure that the pot is high enough to place the peppers and close the lid later on).

2. Cut off the top part of each pepper, making sure you don’t cut off the pepper stem. What you do is cut around the pepper top and make sure the knife has a little bit of an incline towards the inner center of the pepper.

3. After you have the top part in your hand, clean it well and remove the inside core and seeds on it (cut the core off with a straight cut).

4. Next thing to do is punch some holes at the bottom of the pepper so that the sauce can reach the stuffing while it cooks. You can punch the holes with a skewer.

And now your peppers are ready for the stuffing.

 

Step 2: Preparing the stuffing.

1. Fry the chopped onion and grated carrot on an oiled pan until golden.

2. Take carrot and onion off the stove and place in a mixing bowl. Add all the rest of the ingredients to it and mix well.

The stuffing is now ready.

 

Step 3: Stuffing the peppers.

Simple – Place about 2 tbsp of stuffing into every pepper while the peppers are in the cooking pot (it makes it easier later on). If you are left with stuffing simply add to the peppers. Make sure that they are not over filled. You want the, to be ¾ full maybe a bit more but not completely filled with stuffing.

 

Step 4: Making the sauce.

Again – pretty simple. Place all the ingredients in a small pot and bring to boil over medium heat. Once it boils lower the heat to minimum and let stand for 3-5 minutes. After that – turn heat off.

Sauce is ready 🙂

 

Step 5: Adding the sauce to the peppers

1. Pour about 3-4 tbsp sauce into each stuffed pepper. The rice in the stuffing will need the liquids. Cover the peppers with their tops.

2. Gently, start pouring the sauce into the pot with peppers, pouring between the peppers and once done, place the lid on the pot.

The sauce should almost be as high as the peppers in the pot.

If you don’t think you have enough sauce you can pour some hoot water in between the peppers, but not too much.

 

Step 6: Cooking the peppers.

Let the peppers cook for about 1 hour over medium low heat. After 1 hour turn the heat off and let stand for another hour.

You’re done!

I know, it looks like so much work and so many steps but after you do it once you’ll see it’s not really so and after you taste it, you’ll know for sure that it was all worth it. You can eat it plain or with some sour cream on top – soooo good!

A real taste of home!